Dark Web, not to be confused with the upcoming Unfriended: Dark Web, is a horror anthology made of eight different segments, of various lengths, each one directed by a different person.

What intrigued me about this concept is that, a la ABCs of Death, for this project came together eight up-and-coming filmmakers from around the world: one of them from my home country, Italy. How about that?! Also, I got curious by the idea of delving into the dark web – even though only on a fictional level – because it’s a field that can provide with some really original and innovative ideas.

However, Dark Web’s connection with the internet is only in the title. In fact, this flick is not about the dark web at all… which makes me think it was titled like that only to cash in on the upcoming Unfriended sequel. As though this wasn’t bad and tricky enough, the eight short movies – completely unrelated, besides the wrap-around story – suffer enormously from terrible acting, uninspired storylines and ultra-cheap look and feel.

Sometimes, horror anthology can be a good way to spend free time, since you might like a few segments and skip the ones you don’t enjoy. Here, however, the segments range from watchable to downright atrocious.

Instead of covering them all with this little review, I’m going to briefly talk about two of them: the “best” and the worst – the wrap-around story (which doesn’t have a title) and Another Day at the Office. Before I start, bear in mind that even the “good” segments here suffer a lot from the aforementioned issues… so, technically you should avoid this mess of a movie entirely.

The wrap-around story follows the guy from The Human Centipede Second and Third Sequence who is waiting for a prostitute to come over his place and, in the meantime, enjoys watching videos of people being murdered: these videos, by the way, are the segments of the movie… and, I should repeat, they have nothing to do with the dark web!

The frame that’s woven around the other seven segments is interesting and quite creepy due to two main reasons: two twists that are hardly predictable and perfectly work within the short runtime; Laurence R. Harvey (the psycho from the Human Centipede movies) is actually a rather good character actor and here is performance is funny, uneasy and captivating nonetheless. I’d give this segment a 6.5/10.

The absolute worst short flick is Another Day at the Office (1/10), where a bunch of people newly employed by a financial business company are asked to go on a trip with four of their bosses: here, alone in the woods, they’re hunted by the chiefs of the company in a cat-and-mouse game. If they survive, they’ll be admitted in the board of directors. As entertaining as this silly premise might sound, the execution is poor in every aspect: the fight scenes seem to come directly from Samurai Cop, the acting is worse than atrocious, the story has no twists nor turns, which makes for an unbelievably boring experience. This segment lasts 7 minutes and seems 3 hours longer than that!

The other segments, which I’m not going to talk about in case you’re interested in checking this cheap anthology out, range from decent (5/10 for two of them) to bad (between 4 and 2 out of 10). Do yourself a favour and avoid this garbage.

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